The Stranger's Child

Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst's new work has all the satisfactions of an old-fashioned family saga. Beginning in the glorious English summer before the Great War, the story follows the middle-class Sawle family from their first encounter with upper-crust young poet Cecil Valance, through the war, and beyond, tracking the havoc of love revealed and passions kept secret amid a changing society. Narrator James Wilson does a fine job with most of this long and involving book. His pacing is sensitive to the action, and when a character is said to laugh or cry, we hear it in his tone. While his light tenor sounds forced when voicing baritone characters, he is otherwise a believable and trustworthy guide. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine